Airports face growing challenges with regard to security. Recent terrorist attacks and the increasing sophistication of terrorist tactics have created a need for more thorough screening of passengers, checked baggage, carry-on items, and packages being shipped by air. The added security has caused passenger inconvenience, flight delays, and increased instances of lost baggage and packages.
Aside from security concerns, airports have a desire to facilitate movement of passengers, baggage, and packages as quickly and efficiently as possible. Such areas of movement include passenger ticketing, baggage check-in, security checkpoints, and passenger movement to and between gates in the terminal.
Various methods have been devised for identifying articles such as packages and baggage and associating them with passengers. At the most basic level, tags or labels having passenger-specific information are affixed to the articles and some passenger-associating information, such as an identification number, is hand-keyed into an airline record or computerized tracking database. More sophisticated systems may utilize bar-coded tags and labels. While bar coding reduces the amount of time required to track articles, the tags must still be manually and individually passed under a bar code reader, or a hand-held reader must be passed over the tag in order to read the tag. This can take a significant amount of time and effort when large quantities of articles must be handled, such as baggage and packages for a departing commercial airliner. Delayed flight departures and missed flights frequently occur when the articles are not timely loaded onto the aircraft, generating passenger angst and resulting in increased shipping and handling expenses for packages due to the labor required.
There is a need for a faster, less labor-intensive and more reliable means for tracking articles entering and leaving an airport facility. There is a further need to streamline the tracking process for articles as they migrate through the airport. Yet another need exists to more efficiently associate articles with passengers, and facilitate increased security measures without undue hindrance to passenger movement about the airport terminal.